Washington – Washinton’s Kalorama neighbourhood just
keeps getting swankier: Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has bought the former Textile Museum, a 27 000 square-foot property, intending to
convert it into a single-family home, according to a person with knowledge of
the sale.
Bezos' neighbours will include President Barack Obama and
his family, who are renting a property nearby for their post-White House home,
as well as future first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, incoming
presidential adviser Jared Kushner.
Bezos' new home - the largest in Washington - sold October
21 for $23 million in cash (a million over its list price) to a buyer described
in public documents as the Cherry Revocable Trust. But word about the identity
of the new billionaire next door has been circulating around the enclave that
ambassadors and Cabinet secretaries have long called home.
Bezos, wife McKenzie and their four children live in the
Seattle area. When he purchased The Post in 2013, Bezos said he didn't plan to
relocate to "the other Washington." "I won't be leading The
Washington Post day-to-day," he told Forbes. There are no indications he
will move here permanently.
The home is expected to be an East-coast pied a terre for
the family - allowing him to avoid hotel bills - but the ample square footage
means there's plenty of room for entertaining.
Read also: Amazon's Bezos defends corporate culture
The property at 2320-2330 S Street NW spans two historic
mansions, which housed the Textile Museum for nearly 90 years until it moved to
George Washington University's campus in 2013. The two mansions were sold
together in May 2015 for $19 million, the largest residential sale in the
District of Columbia that year. They were put back on the market in 2016 at $22
million.
The property has drawn interest not just because of its
sprawling size but its architectural pedigree. In 1912, Textile Museum founder
George Hewitt Myers hired John Russell Pope, architect of the Jefferson
Memorial, to design his home at 2320 S St. A decade later, Myers bought the
adjacent mansion, which was designed by noted Washington architect Waddy Butler
Wood. Both properties are on the National Register of Historic Places.
Don't look for moving vans just yet, though. Renovation
plans drawn up by prominent local architecture firm Barnes Vanze are under
review by the local Advisory Neighbourhood Commission.